Call of Duty Elite

When Infinity Ward lost two of its founders, Jason West and Frank Zampella, I wondered how that studio would fair. The developer works in tandem with Treyarch on the Call of Duty series. One studio releases an entry while the other works on theirs in a back-and-forth schedule that’s produce a game every year like clockwork. With that loss of leadership, who would enter to fill that void? Better yet, with that messy disruption and the numerous departures, how could Infinity Ward ship its latest game in time?

ECHOES OF WORLD WAR II: At the E3 Activision booth, I saw the same demo that the company showed at the Microsoft news conference. In Hunter Killer, a team of special forces members hijack a Russian submarine and use its missiles to retaliate against the Kremlin. The setup screams Hollywood blockbuster, and in a way, it echoes back to the series’ origins in World War II.

During the special forces escape, they’ll see battleships firing at each other and aircraft carriers slowly sinking. Meanwhile, skyscrapers along the New York waterfront will be set on fire. Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer games even managed to get the Freedom Tower in the distance despite the building not being completed yet.